Evo chop from Belgium

Hmmkay, this day started a bit shitty. We went to Antwerpen, Belgium, to shoot this Evo hardtail chopper of Wim. What had to be a fun and short ride of about one hour, ended up as a traffic nightmare of 5 (!!!) hours, as the Belgians decided to do some road-repairs this very day and the traffic was stuck from Breda to Antwerpen.
But then we arrived in Antwerpen and this friendly guy Wim and his nice motorcycle made us smile again! (And we were allowed to make Belgian jokes too! hihi)

Rogues MC Choppershow 2010

Time is flying by when having fun, it's a phrase that's really true! I found this out yesterday at the RMC Choppershow 2010, organised by the Rogues from Opmeer. A lot of cool bikes of all makes, sizes and colours and home-built exclusively. What more do we wish?

Painters, leather artists, airbrushers, pinstripers, you name it...








I really liked this boardtracker, based on a Krugger frame and built by a really friendly guy from The Hague.






Lot's of inspiration!






Niels took his Triumph in the back of his Skoda... in parts! No kidding!!







*uch* the best bike of the show...






But this one, a Harley Dyna with 23 inch wheels, was nominated as the best bike of the show, and the jury was right about that!






Ecke's highneck in a new outfit







Short Cut's SR500 single samurai bike







I handled over the latest issue of BSH to Tjeerd, Short, as he is featured in it with his previous Triumph project. He didn't want to be disturbed by passengers at his stall (and not by irritating photographers, too) since...

Shovel with sidecar

This is Wim from Hengelo and he overhauled his Shovelhead and made a nice looking sidecar onto it. We shot some nice photo's today!
















Behind the scene...












The red colour looks great with the flashers pointed onto it!

Kaaskoppenmotor

How Dutch do you want it? JP spend many many many hours on painting his mate's bike Delft's Blue, with little cozy houses, animals and all the stuff you don't expect on a biker's bike! We did some shots of it, today on this rainy dark & grey day. There are some nice pictures though!

Dark clouds, like the Dutch classic oil-painters like 'em. The ambient is, as you see, heavily under-exposed. It's actually daylight!

JP and his lovely wooden shoes!

My 2-pod lightstand of today :-)

L&L Sportsters

Finally some good weather today and so I went to L&L Choppers and shot two of their resent creations. It's two Harley-Davidson Sportster choppers of Michel and Mark. Both guys were really patience and so they let me play around with my strobes! Thanks!! We did a lot of 'standard' statics. But we had some time left so did also some wide-angle strobist arty farty magic :-)

Okay, the flash set-up of both pictures: Bright sun up front, the sky is under-exposed for about two stops. Did this with a really short shutter-time, actually shorter than the flash-duration, but you don't notice it on the pictures. I put a strobe left-high behind the guys, another strobe right-side, behind the front-wheel and a thirth strobe at my right hand next to me. This one was supplied with a grid, just to only light up the front end of the bike and not the face. Never did something like this before but I think it worked out quit good!!

two cool Harleys in new Bigtwin magazine

Every third thursday of the month I’m exited, as Bigtwin magazine, this day, always updates their website and shows what bikes are featured in the next month’s issue! Y’know, I’m pushing the F5 button all the time.... Being inpatience and all that... Well, in the april issue of Bigtwin there are two of my photoshoots published. It’s Sjoerd’s Panhead, with pictures I’m still very proud of. And also Henk’s CCR95 Evo bobber is in next month’s issue. And some translation work too. And then there’s cool GSXR hardtail chopper in old skool British streetfighter style. I think it’s shot by colleague Grizzly? Wow, can’t wait till this issue drops in my mailbox!

Controlling the light

Rene's Triumph now is featured in 100% Biker magazine. Well, this might be a good opportunity to explain why I sometimes use all those big lights and heavy-weight batteries and tripod-stands on location!

The picture on top is the standard photo, without use of any light. Oops! As you see, there's too much dynamic range! The lights in the windows are blowing out out and the bike is covered in shade. It's crap, can't use this for a bike feature...














This looks like a problem, isn't it? Okay, I didn't move the bike or the camera, which was put on a tripod. Rene wasn't in a hurry and coincidently I stuffed my car full of gear. I had to under-expose the windows to get the nice atmospheric colours back. But this way, the bike would be totally black! So, I pointed two 750 watt studiolights (with softbox & umbrella's), ran on 220 v batteries, on each side of the bike. The bike has nice shades and highlights now. So, this way I have total control about the subject (the bike) and the background (the windows). Y'see, it takes some time (and some muscle-power to carry all the gear too) but the photo looks exactly the way I want it!














Nice, isn't it? By the way, Rene modified the bike. Shot this photo at the Bigtwin Bikeshow 2009.